


Barry's Girl

by orphan_account



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Canon-Typical Character Death, F/M, Pining, Rating May Change, Temporary Character Death, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-11 10:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11146761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Barry's got himself a girl and Lucretia wants to make her hers.(Alternatively, Lucretia pines after Lup for decades)





	1. I play along with the charade

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE (6/16) This fic is suspended indefinitely. I've felt weird about it from the start but my interest in and commitment to writing it have officially died. It will probably stay unfinished forever (but you never know). Thanks for reading it, and sorry it ended up this way.
> 
> This fic is inspired entirely by the 1981 hit, "Jessie's Girl," by Mr. Richard Springfield so take that into account. Hopefully this won't be too long (or too much of a downer), but I've definitely said that before. Thank you for reading!

Lucretia was the first to know. She knew even before Barry knew, before Lup knew. There was something there, and she watched it grow for decades. Maybe it was presumptive to say that she knew before anybody else, before even the two people involved but- she had seen this before. She had written this story so, so many times before. She was the first to know.

Maybe it was the way Barry looked at Lup that first year, when he and Lup and Taako would grunt in that strange animal language at each other. When she would screw up her face to make a particularly weird-sounding noise and Taako would laugh so hard he cried. Barry was laughing too, but there was something soft in his eyes.

Maybe it was the way Lup would go out of her way to treat Barry. She’d make his favorite cookies (raspberry-almond thumbprints) for them to eat on those late nights they spent trying to triangulate where the Light of Creation could have landed. She’d make his favorite dinner (pot roast) when he got back from a solo mission. And she’d make these things for everyone when she was cooking, but Lucretia noticed how she’d learned Barry’s favorite foods, and how she made them at certain times.

On their tenth cycle, things are rough. Magnus and Davenport and Merle die. Everyone is shaken, but especially Barry. They die near the end of the year, but there’s still two months where they’re not around. Taako and Lup stick together, and are uncharacteristically quiet. Barry stumbles around in a fog of depression. Once, Lucretia tries to talk to him, but he’s so distraught the conversation doesn’t last long. He feels responsible, is what she gleans, because it was his suggestion to look in the forest. He didn’t know about the enormous wild boars- none of them did. Lucretia tells him as much, but he just shakes his head and shuffles back to bed. That night, Lucretia can hear him crying in his room. Then, she hears a knock on his door, and a quiet voice speaking to him. And she knows it’s Lup, and she knows that this is the start of something.

On their seventeenth cycle, Lucretia hears about the robot Barry tried to fix over dinner. Lup is laughing, telling everyone about how it kept shocking him and how he just kept going back for more. Her laugh sounds different, though. Fonder. And when she looks at Barry and they make eye contact, she _knows_.

And it hurts.

Her entire life has been spent chronicling the lives of others. She’s told stories of wars, of loves, of defeats, of triumphs. Most of them true, most of them embellished. All of them stories of other people. All of them distant memories of lives she hasn’t lived. The life she’s living now- the endless cycling through endless realities, none of which are her own- feels like the stories she’s written. Impersonal. Beyond her control. It drives her crazy sometimes, knowing that even now, there’s not much she can do. Even though she’s trying to write her own story, there’s still plot points that she just can’t change.

In most stories she’s written, there has been an element of romance. The birth and death of relationships, the sting of unrequited love, the deep cut of betrayal. In the story she’s living, she watches the birth of a romance and feels the sting of knowing Lup will not love her the way she loves Barry. One or two nights she tried crying herself to sleep, but it only left her feeling pitiful and more alone than ever. 

When they land on the beach planet and collectively decide to take a year off, Lucretia feels anxious. A year off with nothing to distract her from Lup- no adventures or high-stakes missions or hunting for the Light. There’s fairly interesting flora and fauna in this reality, and she spends a large amount of time sketching and examining them. But she can’t spend her entire year looking at palm fronds, no matter how hard she tries. There are still meals and game nights and the one time Magnus convinces everyone to play a game of beach volleyball. She still has to _interact_ with her crew members, with her friends. She has to watch Lup and Barry sitting progressively closer to each other, looking at each other and glancing away. She watches their hands brush, and both of them jerk like they’ve been shocked. 

For a while, Lucretia sits on the beach and watches Taako surf. Sometimes she sketches him, sometimes she writes down the nonsense words he keeps insisting are, “gnarly surfer lingo.” Then Barry starts joining her and she just can’t take it. It isn’t that she hates him- she likes him, likes his company. He’s like family at this point; all of them are. But it’s so hard to sit next to the man Lup likes- loves?- knowing he’ll kiss her if he hasn’t already. Knowing he’ll tell her he loves her and she’ll say it back and that Lucretia will never hear those words from Lup. It’s too hard. She cries herself to sleep that night and feels all the worse for it the next morning.

Through the next dozen or so cycles she makes peace with it. As Merle parleys with the Hunger, she and the rest of the crew work to find the Light and learn about the realities they enter. She spends time with Barry again, talks to him about wildlife she’s discovered and the previous night’s dinner that Magnus had insisted he cook and about how Davenport won’t stop wearing tube socks with sandals after that one reality they ended up in. 

And it still hurts, sometimes, knowing he and Lup are getting closer and closer, but her jealousy isn’t something she’s willing to lose a 40-some-odd-year friendship over. And spending time with Barry and Lup, both together and separately, helps. It’s easy to see how happy they make each other, and there’s some solace in that, knowing that Lup is happy. But Lucretia still thinks about her, sometimes.


	2. I feel so dirty when they start talking cute

The forty-seventh cycle keeps Lucretia busy, and it keeps Lup out of sight (and out of mind). She and Barry are always off somewhere, practicing what they will only describe as, “some dope shit.” Taako’s pretty sure it’s music of some sort, but he stopped theorizing when he gained a following for his stolen quotes. It’s a cycle that most of them spend not in solitude, necessarily, but apart. Lucretia studies watercolor painting under Dr. Ross, a short older woman with laugh lines and endless stories about the trouble she used to get into. Dr. Ross is the person Lucretia spends most of her year with while Magnus is learning woodcarving, Merle is teaching what can generously be called dancing, Taako is leading the youth astray, Davenport is singing, and Lup and Barry are doing… whatever it is they’re working on.

With most of her days spent painting a variety of scenes- the classroom, Dr. Ross, the campus quad, a vase of half-wilted flowers- Lucretia is able to throw herself into her work enough to not spend every waking moment thinking about what Barry and Lup might be doing. It’s a break she desperately needed- a year of nothing but working towards a goal that’s finally not (just) the Light of Creation. A year spent mostly away from her friends who, wonderful as they were, could drive her batshit crazy. A year away from two specific friends.

Taako was right- Lup and Barry were working on music. It was a duet, with Barry playing the piano and Lup playing the violin. They got onstage, Lup in a floor-length evening gown and Barry in a tuxedo. Lup’s makeup was done by one of the cosmetology students, and she looks radiant. She always does- that was the thing about Lup, she’s always glowing. Like there’s a fire inside her that just wouldn’t go out. But today she looks especially gorgeous, and Lucretia knows it’s her happiness shining through. It hurts to think that.

During Lup and Barry’s duet, Lucretia cries. Initially it’s at the sheer beauty of the music and the way both players are so engrossed in the performance. It’s easily the most beautiful song she’s ever heard, and she was already teary-eyed over her painting getting accepted. And as Barry and Lup bow, holding hands, she keeps crying. By the time they’ve run off, she’s trying to hide her face in her hands as fat, ugly tears run down her cheeks and Merle, in his leotard, keeps asking her if she’s okay. She tells him she’s fine, it was just such a beautiful song.

For the rest of the year, Barry and Lup are walking on air, always holding hands and smiling at each other. Lucretia passes Lup’s room once and the door is partway open, enough to see Lup kneeling over Barry on her bed. Lucretia tries not to stare, but Lup is bending over and kissing Barry and her long, curly hair falls around his face like a curtain. Lup must have done something, because Barry groans quietly, and Lucretia hurries off, heart pounding.

The next cycle, Barry and Lup are disgustingly cute. Lup calls Barry “bluejean baby” only half-jokingly, and Barry calls Lup “sugarbear.” Lucretia feels her face burning when she hears them talking like that, when they’re sitting with their thighs pressed together and their arms around each other. Lup slips her hand into Barry’s back pocket when they’re walking somewhere, sometimes. They kiss each other all the time and only refer to each other by pet names. Everyone makes fun of them, mostly good-naturedly (Davenport in particular is not pleased with this development), and Lucretia spends most of the cycle wanting to die so she can just skip the next 6 months of this.

Sometimes- and oh, she feels so bad when she does it, but- sometimes, when Lup calls Barry “sunshine” or “babycakes,” Lucretia imagines she’s talking to her. Calling her those names. It sends a flush of shame and embarrassment across her face, and she hopes the others can’t tell how red her face is. It’s such a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach, inserting herself into their private relationship. She feels guilty and dirty, but she doesn’t stop.

(Sometimes at night, when she’s lying in bed, alone, struck by how empty a bed can feel, she can almost hear Lup’s voice telling her to _calm down and go to sleep, she’s right there, okay, doll? Just breathe in, breathe out, rinse and repeat until you’re asleep._ It helps.)


	3. I look in the mirror all the time/wondering what she don't see in me

The fiftieth cycle, they throw a party. Fifty years of survival, fifty years of outrunning the Hunger. Fifty years of friendship, of love, of family. Everyone gets blackout drunk. The last thing Lucretia remembers is telling Taako she can _absolutely_ jump over the kitchen counter if she gets a running start. When she wakes up the next morning with a throbbing headache and a massive bruise on her shin, she guesses that she was wrong about the counter thing.

The next few days are the equivalent of putting together a puzzle- everyone is trying to figure out what they said and did, and why each one of them had one of Merle’s socks tucked neatly under their pillows. Lucretia finds a note, seemingly written in her handwriting, taped upside-down to the oven door that reads, “REMEMBER TO BE QUIET SHE IS SLEEPING.” Inside the oven itself is a single egg. Magnus, wearing sunglasses and nursing a Fantasy Gatorade, quietly tells her they were trying to hatch a chicken so they could name it Belinda. Lucretia counts her blessings they never got around to turning the oven on. 

Other than the bruise on her shin, Lucretia finds some small bruises on her neck and shoulders that looks suspiciously like hickeys. Taako, Davenport, and Lup have them, too. After a day or so, Barry remembers using some suctioning lab equipment to give everybody who would sit still fake hickies.

“So we can all pretend to be cool and say we got some,” Lucretia vaguely remembers Barry slurring before winking at Lup.

Then there’s the mystery of the note on Lucretia’s pillow. It’s a rough drawing of what looks like a nondescript person making a kissy face and the words, “ur cute.” It’s not her own handwriting- she compared it to the note on the oven and it’s definitely different. She tries process of elimination- definitely not Taako, certainly not Davenport, probably not Barry, maybe Magnus? Possibly Merle? _Not Lup_ is what she tells herself over and over again, but she doesn’t want to listen. Nobody comes forward about it and she doesn’t bring it up, either. She’s afraid that if she does, she won’t get the answer she’s hoping for.

The next year, they land on an ice planet. They circle it several times, but find nothing but frozen oceans and snow-covered continents. There don’t appear to be any signs of life. Davenport lands on what seems like the largest land mass. It’s bitter cold outside, and when the Light of Creation falls, Lup is one of the first to volunteer to go get it. 

“Listen, I’m gonna be an integral part of this mission. If you haven’t noticed, fire is kind of my thing. If I don’t come, you dipshits will freeze your asses off and I’m not having that on my hands.”

“You don’t want our frozen asses on your hands?” Merle asks, and Lup shoots him a look that would have killed a lesser dwarf. 

They decide the search party is going to be Lup, Magnus, Merle, and Lucretia. Barry wants to come, but Davenport tells him that he needs him and Taako on the ship to help review one of their newest ideas to stop the Hunger. Lucretia specifically requests to go on the mission- she’s getting more than a little stir-crazy after a month stuck in the Starblaster with everyone, and she wants to see what’s here, on this frozen planet. And there’s a tiny chance she goes because she thinks there’s a possibility she’ll get some alone time with Lup.

As it turns out, she does- they’re exploring an ice cave they think the Light may have fallen in and part of it collapses. Magnus and Merle get trapped on one side, the side closest to the main tunnel. Lup and Lucretia get stuck in a small alcove. Lup starts melting the ice trapping them in only to find most of it has rocks frozen inside, meaning they’re still stuck even if the ice melts. On the other side, Magnus and Merle are trying to figure out how to get the girls out without compromising the structural integrity of the cave. It’s a bad situation all around.

While they’re trapped, Lup and Lucretia talk. About their crewmates, first, and similar situations they’ve been in over the past fifty years. Topics get slowly more personal, with childhood stories and poorly-kept secrets, and then Lup brings up the party.

“You know last year when we all got super fucked up? Did you ever get a weird note?”

Lucretia feels her heart rate spike and a blush start to burn under her already red and chapped skin. She nods carefully, quietly, not wanting to say anything lest the spell be broken.

“Yeah? Do you know who it was from?”

There’s a glimmer in Lup’s eye that Lucretia doesn’t know how to interpret. Despite the cold, she can feel sweat beading on her forehead. She shakes her head ‘no,’ lips pressed together so hard she’s not sure she’ll ever get them back apart.

“Huh. You wanna take a guess?”

She’s full-on smiling now, not a mean smirk but a genuine, excited smile. Lucretia is confused, and nervous, and her stomach is full of butterflies that she wishes would fly out already.

“Um. W-well, I’m going to guess it wasn’t Taako.” She’s playing it safe, treading carefully on this ice until she can tell how thick it is. She doesn’t want Lup to laugh at her, to tease her for thinking (hoping!) that she left Lucretia that note. 

“Good guess. Though I wasn’t looking for who _didn’t_ write it.”

“Lup…” she starts, but Lup cuts her off.

“Bingo! And the ten billion dollar prize goes to Lucretia!”

It’s kind of a punch to the gut, finding out what she hoped and prayed to be true actually… was true. Her heart soars as all the air leaves her lungs. 

“Why?” She whispers.

Lup cocks her head. “Because I think you’re cute. And I was really drunk and Barry said I should just _tell_ you already and I thought you’d bring it up before now. And I guess I chickened out on bringing it up myself.”

Lucretia’s mind is reeling, taking in all this information. Barry knows? Barry _told_ Lup to write the note? Lup has been waiting for _her_ to bring it up? She leans back against the cave wall with a sigh and looks at Lup, trying to figure out which question to ask first.

“Barry…?”

“Yeah, he knows. He likes you too, you know. Not in the same way, probably, but yeah. He knows I like you. Sometimes we talk about you.”

She flushes- what have they been saying about her? Does she want to know? This is all so much to take in. Lup wrote the note. Lup told Barry that she likes Lucretia. _Lup likes Lucretia._ Everything happening is so much all at once, and before they can get any further in their discussion, they hear Merle yell, “Get back!” and Magnus is Fantasy Kool-Aid Man-ing himself through the wall of rocks with an, “Oh yeah!”

Lup smiles at Lucretia before they head out the Magnus-shaped hole to continue their expedition. Lucretia smiles back, albeit shakily. Her heart is light and she can’t help the spring in her step that accompanies her all the way out of the cave and onward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little less bleak than the others and I think this fic is close to being done. I'm flip-flopping a little bit on how I want to end it but we'll see what happens. Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated.
> 
> (Also, yes, Lup could have 100% just blasted their way out of the cave-in but that's just not narratively convenient)


End file.
